2003 has been a good year to be an Aereogramme fan. It has been marked with the release of the album Sleep and Release, tours throughout the UK, America, and Europe, as well as an EP, tour CDs and well, even more touring.
From Glasgow, Scotland, they have been building a name for themselves over the past few years, and they first came to my attention when a friend loaned me a copy of their debut album, A Story in White. It wasn’t like I expected it to be at all though. In fact, it simply wasn’t like anything at all.
I was immediately taken by the song ‘Sunday 3:52’. It was the beginnings of winter and this was a beautiful track wrapped in lush strings, but at the same time capturing the complete bleakness of the moment. It is just such an honest and moving song, and was so perfect to me; I could play it over and over on repeat.
The next song to grab me was ‘Post-Tour, Pre-Judgement’: quite the opposite in style, being full of distorted guitars, organs and delayed drums. By the middle you would be left completely enraptured by the gentleness of the music, but the anticipation would just grow too large as the song developed, knowing full well what it was building towards. When it finally arrived you have no choice but to close your eyes and feel the adrenaline surge through you as the primal burst of screaming was let loose. It was music to not only stimulate the brain but cause reactions throughout your entire body.
Already I had learned that Aereogramme were going to be a key piece in my musical jigsaw, so I kept the copy of the album as long as I could before ordering a copy for myself. From that starting point onwards, my appreciation of their music has grown and grown.
Sleep and Release added 10 new songs to the equation and has been as successful in capturing their original ideas and sounds as A Story in White was. It could be argued even more successful actually, and this has been rewarded with new fans discovering the band as well as additional media coverage here in the Netherlands via magazines and radio, so the overall outlook has been positive.
Thankfully when they visited the Netherlands during May, I was able to witness two concerts and also lucky enough to meet up with the band in Utrecht before their concert in Ekko. It was a beautiful spring evening, and I sat outside the venue to chat with singer, Craig B, and bassist Campbell on the steps of the Oudegracht canal as the world cycled past.
Firstly guys, how has the European tour been for you?
Craig: It’s been probably the most enjoyable tour so far that we’ve done, I think. For some reason, it’s just far, far better in Europe for us because the UK is pretty depressing and America is so large that there are no constants; it just changes all the time. Europe has been generally very busy every night and it’s just been a total joy to play to people.
I hear you’re big in Germany, actually.
Craig: Yeah, again I have no idea why.
Campbell: I think it’s just something the Germans have picked up on - the Hasselhoff factor. Well, maybe they just kinda get what we’re doing. They kind of latently always understand hard music, regardless of how it’s presented to them - be it Rammstein or Dillinger Escape Plan, it just doesn’t matter. They just like music from any angle as long as there’s a slightly metal, or even just a slightly brutal undertone to it.
I’m impressed by the spectrum of the audience we play to each night. When we played in Dresden, our guitar tech said he had never seen a front row like that before. There was a 65 year old hippy head right in the middle, a total hardcore metal man with the chewed beard, indie girls, and just a whole selection of people. I’m so proud that’s starting to happen, but it’s only happening here [in Europe].
I go to lots of shows and sometimes it’s just full of old dudes like me, or another time I’ll go and it will make me feel really old as there are loads of young folk there. So it was just great to be at a show that had this fantastic spectrum of people. It’s kind of what we’re trying to achieve and so positive for us.
The whole of Germany is like that actually. I don’t think they’re so category oriented, certainly not as they are in the UK.
So are you not wanting to leave this tour or are you still grateful to be going home in a few days?
Craig: Well we’ve been on the road now, [Bursts out laughing], well we’ve been touring for 11 weeks, so we’ve did our stint. I’ll go back, see my lady and sleep for a long time. Then we’re coming back here to Europe in July again.
Campbell: Yeah, we have some festivals in Europe, then three shows with Rollins, which is gonna be fucking amazing. I’ll get to work out with the big man in the morning. Apparently he’s got this cage he takes with him - the ultimate workout cage. It has all the shit attached to it he needs for his pull-ups and stuff. I want to get in that motherfucker with him.
I actually saw you live at Gig on the Green in Scotland last year when you opened on the main stage. Do you enjoy doing the festival thing?
Craig: Well, Gig on the Green was a bit of a one-off because we were playing on the main stage, which was bizarre. It was a lot of fun, but we spent most of the gig avoiding the Frisbees. We’ve played some gorgeous, gorgeous festivals in Europe though, and again Europe just does these things a lot better. They organize things better; they just look after you so much better.
We’ve played some astonishing festivals in Scandinavia as well. I really enjoy them, yeah. It’s a strange experience though, as it’s completely different; especially when you’re playing in the daylight. It’s quite odd.
Campbell: I really enjoyed that day [at Gig on the Green]. That was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in music, just because we were playing on the same stage as Jane's Addiction and I got to speak to them. They’re like ultimate, über musical heroes of mine. They were dicks to me, but I fully expected that. I’d have been disappointed if they were nice. I walked up to Dave Navarro to say "your band is brilliant" as I’d never done that before and he said "yeah, brilliant" [as he puts on his best mocking tone]. Then he just totally fucking blanked me. Yes! Treated like a fucking asshole by Dave Navarro. Now I’ve arrived!
Ever wanted to play something like Ozzfest or one of the heavier festivals?
Campbell: I’d fucking bite your arm off to do Ozzfest. Of course we’d do it.
Craig: We would get bottles of piss and I’m not doing a Mike Patton to throw it all over myself.
Campbell: The last time I went to Donington actually, was around 1988 when it was Guns N Roses and all that. I just remember seeing this big, horrible biker guy doing a shit in a carrier bag. He just dropped his pants and you just saw it. The bag was white but it was slightly diaphanous in the July sunlight, and you just saw these horrible nuggets of doom dropping into this bag. Then he spun it around his head and threw it into the crowd. You just thought that with 70 or 80,000 kids in a field, one kid was gonna get not only his day ruined, but his whole weekend, and possibly be traumatized for life.
Moving on from that well crafted image now implanted in all of our minds. The Aereogramme live show depends on the vital operation of samplers and sequencers. In particular, do you not think you’re putting a lot of trust into a laptop running Windows 98?
Campbell: You should really ask Iain about that. I don’t really know. It is a big fucking risk, but it’s a lot less risky than bringing a bunch of fucking classical musicians on tour. Sure, we run the risk of a computer not working every night, but it’s better than the risk of the rider being drunk by a pissed up violist. Classical musicians are without a doubt the biggest bunch of piss-heads. I mean, they put rock bands to shame with their capacity for drugs, alcohol and shagging your girlfriend. You’re better off having a laptop on tour than a violinist any fucking day of the week.
So you have no plans to borrow the Delgados orchestral section for some recordings then?
Campbell: It’s especially those dicks! I did three or four shows working with the Delgados, just driving and selling t-shirts. That put me off classical guys forever. Then we did a tour for three or four weeks in the States with them and they are lovely people, but they’re so fucking high maintenance. They’ve never done the "let’s get in the back of a van and tour" situation. They’re just [puts on his upmarket accent], "I get paid for doing this. I expect to be treated in X, Y, Z kind of fashion."
Nah, stick it on a laptop! I’ll take my chances with fucking windows before I take my chances with any of those dicks.
So are you not sick of the Delgados yet after all that time you spend with them?
Campbell: They’re amazing people. It’s actually really annoying because the more you get to know them and you see they way they are, the people they are, it’s harder to be associated with them as the label. When you’re in a band, it’s your job to be pissed off at your label because they aren’t giving you enough money, etc, etc. It just makes it really hard because the Delgados are some of my very best friends, but they’re also the label and the more time we spend with them on tour or at the label, the more difficult it is to draw the line between the friendship and business. It’s a bad idea as there are supposed to be no friends in business but I just can’t be like that.
How do you get on with other bands that have been on Chemikal and how do you handle the weird comparisons to Mogwai etc?
Campbell: We just don’t get it. We don’t understand why they say that.
Feeling brave, I risked telling them about the recent KindaMuzik review where they were accused of being a Mogwai copy band as well as some other insults.
Campbell: I would fully have at that guy if he said it to my face.
Craig: When it comes down to it, there’s no point going any further with the fact that one band is instrumental and one band is not. There’s not much more you can say about it as that’s completely different categories. You have one that’s basically just the sound of the music and the other is actual songs with lyrics and singing. So comparisons... it’s pretty stupid.
Campbell: I think we’ll never get away from the fact that we use dynamics within the music but that’s just one of the things we do. I’m not gonna stop using those dynamics just because Mogwai did it. They didn’t invent the distortion pedal and they sure as hell didn’t invent dynamics within music. I mean, they’re a good band but just because I’m from the city where I’m from and just because I’m on the label that I’m on, they think we’re all the same. A lot of people even compare us to Arab Strap. If we came from Bognor Regis and we were signed to Sony, no-one would dream of comparing us to Arab Strap.
How can I explain to people how wrong and how lazy that is without sitting someone down and pointing out that it was Beethoven and Wagner that created dynamics? It wasn’t Stuart, who just had a distortion pedal. He made a living out of it and that’s fair enough.
I think there is a lot more dimensions to what we do, but I guess people just pick on the one dimension because it’s the obvious one.
Craig: Plus, none of us have got a fucking delay pedal!
Campbell: We’ve not got a delay pedal to our name. Mogwai would go out of fucking business tomorrow if they banned delay pedals and Arab Strap would be in prison when the delay pedal Stasi came around.
Craig: I’ve got a distortion and a tuner, but that’s it.
Campbell: We write songs. There are tunes, there is singing. Sure, we’re drunk after it, but we’re not drunk when we write it, there’s another comparison...
Moving on again before any blood vessels burst. There is the new ‘Livers and Lungs’ EP currently available with three unreleased tracks. These new versions were recorded in America?
Campbell: We recorded about half of it in America. Track 2 [Asthma Came Home for Christmas] and Track 4 [Thriller], we recorded in hotel rooms and stuff. It was fun.
So touring the US was so boring you couldn’t help yourself but get some more recording in?
Campbell: It was just a case that we had a short turnaround on it. We needed an EP just to make a single financially viable. This is one of the things about being on a small label, so we had to write two songs. Well they were already written, but we had to record them on the road and it was a fantastic experience. Probably not one I’d want to repeat in a hurry as it’s hard coming in after a show, after you’ve been driving for ten hours before it. So you come in, set up all the stuff, the computer and Pro Tools, and then you can start. It was really hard, but I’m so fucking proud of the results.
One of the tracks is your reworking of Thriller by Michael Jackson. If Old Wacko was to phone you up and say he was really impressed so wanted to duet, how would you react?
Campbell: I’d say yes. I’d love to work with Michael as I think he’s a genius of his time. What he does in the boudoir is his own business until the cops can actually pin him down.
Craig: I’d bring a rival Bubbles and get them to fight!
Campbell: I’ve actually got a wee Bubbles. Do you want to see my Bubbles?
At which point we were all a little worried about what Campbell was attempting to remove from his trousers. Thankfully it was just a small monkey encased in a bubble key-ring.
I see you have been selling a 5-track acoustic CD containing new songs at the gigs on this tour. What’s been the idea behind that? A cunning way to make money?
Craig: Well that’s definitely a part of it. When you come back on tour, it’s really the only way you can earn a little bit of a living. We’re away for two months and we’re not earning any money to pay for somewhere to live. You’ve got to make a living somehow and it’s a good way to go about it. There are five songs. Four of them are completely new and one is an acoustic version.
So you have new songs written already, what are the plans for the next album?
Campbell: Well, this is depending on a lot of things. I would think we’d be recording it in January or February next year, and those acoustic songs are all going to be on it. We’d no idea how selling these would go but we had come across a couple of bands in the States that do it, and it was nice as it was something really personal. Mark Eitzel does it, and we thought that it’s a fabulous thing to but we didn’t know if people would be into it. We’ve sold shed-loads of them though, just because it’s so personal and we write nonsense on them.
As for the songs, I personally think a lot of the songs Craig writes quite often sound at their best when they’ve just been written on the acoustic. Then we fuck them all up and do allsorts of stuff to it, and that’s the other side of things. I think this is the first opportunity to...
For the moment the conversation is broken off as Martin, the drummer, who has been sitting in the background tenses at the sight of some small children playing on the canal steps. Described as "Super Safety Man", he is ready to dive into the 3 foot water to save the day. Thankfully he’s not called into action though, and the conversation resumes.
Campbell: ..yeah, so we’re letting people hear the song as it’s written, then like a year from now you’ll hear the horrible 80-piece symphony, metal disaster that’s attached to it.
So at this point in time, you are full-time musicians. Do you feel you qualify as professional musicians now?
Craig: At the moment we’re doing this professionally, but we don’t earn professional money. So we’re doing this full time, but when we get home we have to see what our situations are.
Campbell: It’s a weird hinterland we’re in. We all have our own angles that we do. No-one’s going back to a job. We all have our own sidelines, but nothing permanent. Nothing I could call a career.
As for careers, I know you’re all very proud of the work you do in this band. I read your interviews and when you talk about the music you show a lot of enthusiasm and pride about the songs, albums and live shows. How much satisfaction is there, though? Can you focus on the great things you’ve achieved or are you more daunted by the obstacles ahead and the music industry in general?
Campbell: I’m massively frustrated. I’m far from satisfied. Like you say, I’m really proud of what we do and I think we’ve gotten a lot out of it. We got picked up by a few cool labels and got to travel the world, but at the end of the day these are really hollow victories. (a) you can’t support yourself financially. (b) You see a lot of people getting successful who I feel have a lot less talent than the people around me. Not even thinking about myself.
It’s a double edged sword as I never wanted to be the guy that got into the music business just to complain about it but I’ve fully turned into one. So yeah, I’m super-fucking frustrated.
Craig: My view on it is just the fact that I’m extremely satisfied with the work we’ve done over the past eleven weeks. It’s been up and down but there has been some shows that we’ve did a lot of good and it’s really paying off. I know that kids are gonna go away and hopefully tell other people.
After touring all over the world in the past couple of months, you realize just what it actually takes to be successful or make a full living. It demands a step up that seems actually outwith our control and irrelevant of all our work because we could keep on doing this. We see so many bands that come through Glasgow and they’re doing really well, but they’ve been doing it for years. So in one way I’m extremely satisfied but I’m kinda fucking worried about what’s going to happen next.
Campbell: How viable music is seems to be everyone’s concern at the moment. From the labels, top to bottom, there is a certain noise happening. From Matador to Zomba, they just simply think that they’re all fucked. Okay, the Internet is a massive part of it, but when it comes down to it, no-one really gives a fuck anymore, or just that not enough people give a fuck now to actually make an independent music scene work in the way that it did, from punk in the late 70’s onwards. Between ’77 to ’93, there was a real chance for any band. You could come from anywhere, but I think that’s completely gone.
The majors have a complete stranglehold like you wouldn’t believe. The whole job is fucked. I keep saying that, but it’s how I feel. The more we do this, the more I realize that; from promoters to heads of large independent record labels, the whole job is fucked and there is nothing anyone can do. It’s just ever decreasing circles. Chow down on Britney and Justin because that’s all you’re gonna get in 10 years time. It’s bad news.
Wow, I’m sorry I got you so depressed.
Campbell: We’re resigned to it now [thankfully, he’s laughing, so all is not lost]. We’re just trying to spread the word so that something might happen to change the situation. Do you guys think there is a sense of independent music compared to say, 10 years ago? At the moment it seems that majors have been able to capture that essence of independent music because they can sign the bands earlier on, so they don’t need any independents to find the bands for them anymore. It used to be you would do a couple of albums on an independent label, whether it was 4AD or Subpop and then you’d be picked up. That is completely fucked now because the investment to get a band actually beyond that level is hundreds of thousands of pounds.
We can do things that a lot of labels just don’t realize though. A lot of majors are asking, "How is that band able to do that?" They can’t understand how a band that has had ten grand spent on them can get to do what we’ve done, but there are enough people that still like music. We can still sell a lot of records but it’s fading because there’s not enough people giving a shit about it. The people that care are all getting the sack.
Craig: There needs to be a shakeup. It’s not down to musicians; it’s down to the wee kids. There’s not really a group of kids prepared to seek out music. It’s there in certain genres, but it’s like it’s too fragmented. It needs a kind of revolution of some sort because there are fuck all independent labels in Britain anymore. I don’t see how there’s any impetus for any of these kids to start up independent labels either. Everything has been swallowed up.
Campbell: I can’t help but feel that something always happens after these kinds of stalemate points in music. The first being rock and roll, the second one being punk, and I was never a massive British punk fan, but I can’t underestimate the effect that had on everyone’s life who was involved in music. I assume something like that can happen again but I can’t imagine what form it can take. Punk was the reaction to E.L.O. but now the Polyphonic Spree sound like E.L.O. and the kids are going mad for them. As for punk, that sounds like Blink 182 now, so you can’t even have another punk revolution. Maybe it’s just time to put contemporary music to bed. Maybe we are genuinely wasting our time as it’s just run its course.
Craig: Well we kind of worked and met in one of the big record stores. You just learn that people really want to be told what to buy. It’s not a conspiracy theory, but when you walk in the front doors, the first thing you see is what the biggest record companies want you to see. The punters that go into the shops don’t want to go to the back of the shop and search. They just want to walk in and have it there; they pick it up, go to the counter and walk back out. I just think there has to be some sort of awakening to actually tell them, "look, you can do that, but you’re going to get a far more satisfactory experience if you actually go and search out things." Being at the front of the shop does not mean it’s the best music. Simply that it has the most money behind it. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you actually go out and find something, it’s a fucking great experience, like anything in life, but especially with music!
Unfortunately, we’re the ones that are always at the back of the shop. Chemikal Underground can’t afford the huge posters in the window. So people need to be woken up and the only thing we can do is set a good example by playing music that’s not, well we actually tried to be commercial on the last album. We fucking failed because we can’t do that. This is what we do, as extreme as we can go, almost as close to heavy metal, and then we do songs that are as close to Low. I don’t know any other bands that does that and that’s probably going to be the death of us, but it shouldn’t be. Why aren’t other bands doing that? Well the kids are going, "Ugh! That’s kind of weird. I don’t like that." Fuck that!
(To me) It’s a sad fucking state of affairs but I think it’s magic what you’re doing. No matter how small it is, there needs to be more people that do what you’re doing. Just pick up a pen and write about the bands. Send letters to your mates and just tell people that it’s not in the shops that you’re going to find the best music. You’re going to find the best music in the horrible little club down the road, and if there are only fifteen people there, then that’s probably a good sign and will mean the band is good.
Campbell: Anyway, that’s enough of our gloom. I get the feeling I’m ruining your night.
Craig: I’m going to jump in the fucking canal!
...
Sure, we all love a good moan about the bad music on TV and radio, but at the same time we fear the music we love being picked up and trampled to death if it was to become fashionable. This is the mammoth vicious circle of the business right now. Anything that comes along to save the music industry will inevitably be crushed and thrown out in the waves of trends to follow. The situation isn’t totally helpless though. Every one of us that cares about music has power, either by starting up bands, buying good music, or just helping to spread the word. We all have a part to play in the music industry, so try not to be swept along behind when you can be pushing the frontiers. It’s not the ideal situation to be in currently, but there’s still so much wonderful music around. Get it before it’s gone. As for Aereogramme, things aren’t as depressing as it may have sounded. We all have our own worries and insights after all, and three hours after our chat they were transformed back into the rock stars they deserve to be. The show in Ekko was completely solid and each band member had a smile on their face from both the music and the receptive audience. When you see the band on a night like that, you realize exactly why they go through all the difficulties. They play music they believe in, and it’s a fundamental part of their existence. stevenmc Interview courtesy of Incendiary Magazine